If you’re up for trying a new trout stream this season, or want to reacquaint yourself with one you may not have fished for some years, consider Bear Creek in lower Schuylkill County, just over Blue Mountain.

Flowing west to east, Bear Creek is a moderate width stream varying from 15-to 35-feet across with a low-gradient push. The flow is characterized by short, flat riffles; long, mid-depth pools and extensive shallow flats yet the stream has plenty of turn pools, doorstops and dugout holes to provide good trout habitat. Bear Creek is surrounded by sparse woodlands and agricultural fields and right now is under the benefit, or the bane, of two recent major storms which felled a host of large trees across its banks.

Fishing Bear Creek these days you’re going to do a lot of wading and hiking around upended tree roots and thick horizontal trunks. Indeed if you haven’t visited this stream for some seasons, these obstacles will offer a new scenario and challenge. Importantly the holes around the fallen wood shouldn’t be ignored as I found out on a recent March trip -- when the fresh skunk cabbage was a bare three-inches through the ground — because in those deep, dark holes is where a friend and I found the majority of trout.

As for its trout population, Bear Creek has both stocked and wild trout, though it appears the wild trout population has recently crashed likely due to two dry summers.

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West of Auburn, the stream has a nearly two-mile delayed harvest/artificial-lures only section which is the stretch we fished prior to opening day. This is a nice, long distance for a southeast Pa. special regs stream and at the time we started -- mid-morning on a cloudy day -- there were at least a half-a-dozen fly fishermen on the water. Bear Creek also has several miles under general trout regulations, allowing for fishing with bait and everything else. Just by some eyeball-scouting, it appeared that the two sections are pretty much alike in character.

The friend along on this outing last fished the special regulation section a few years back and, at that time, found it loaded with wild brown and stocked brook trout during an early spring outing. Research indicates that Bear Creek has never attained a Class A designation but usually comes up Class B or C in surveys. Class B wouldn’t be bad here. But on the day we fished the only trout we caught were recently stocked rainbows. Most were colorless and blunt, typical badly raised Pa. hatchery rainbows, but one 14-incher had excellent color and fighting abilities.

As for the absence of wild brown trout, the anecdotal evidence was strong. We encountered an egg-laying appearance of black stoneflies, size 14, which on a stream holding wild browns would get trout rising, but we saw no surface feeding. And neither did we catch a single wild brown.

One thought I had is that possibly the stocked rainbows and stocked browns chased the wild fish out of the stretch we fished -- with the wild browns perhaps moving upstream towards the headwaters on the north side of Blue Mountain -- and that they might return when the stockies are depleted (I’ve seen that happen with absconding brook trout). But the unfortunate better bet is that the wild browns died off during two dry summers. I plan on returning to this section during the sulphur hatch in May. If the browns don’t show up then they’re definitely gone, at least for a few years. As I like to say, “Sulphurs hatches don’t lie.”

Online I found an entertaining reference to Bear Creek in the December 1940 edition of the Pennsylvania Angler – the Fish and Boat Commission’s official magazine. Back then the second largest brook trout of the year in the state was taken at Bear Creek. It measured 16 inches and weighed one pound eight ounces.

Beside the stream’s overall appearance, I was pleasantly surprised to find an interesting tree species along Bear Creek – ironwood. There are few ironwood trees on the south side of Blue Mountain but this steel-strong species with a smooth, spiral-ridged bark is well represented in the Bear Creek corridor.

If you’ve never identified an ironwood look for a light grey bark tree of a low to moderate height and modest diameter with a smooth skin. Feel the trunk. If it has noticeable ridges which extend vertically up and down and tree, like the hump of a hog’s back, the tree is an ironwood. The ridges are sometimes noticeable by sight, particularly when moss grows in the shallow valleys between the ridges, but often you have to feel the tree to notice them.

Ironwood is just that — a wood that is so tough and so dense as to be one of the strongest woods there is. A friend of mine in New York, where ironwood is plentiful, makes wading staffs from ironwood.

Access along Bear Creek is found along Rt. 895 from west of Auburn to about Aucheys. Rt. 895 is a rural two-laner with trucks and speeding cars. There are a few pull-offs along both sides of the road. Sometimes the stream is barely a stone’s throw-away; other times there are wide fields between the highway and stream. We found direct access at two bridges on rural roads which bisected 895. Once down the bridge paths it was possible to hike and wade a long distance. A footpath is located on either side of the stream depending on its proximity to the highway.

To reach Bear Creek from the Pottstown area take Rt. 61 north over I-78 towards Cabela’s, then about two miles north turn left on Rt. 895 west. There are two intersections for the widely divided Rt. 895, one going east to New Ringgold, which leads to the Little Schuylkill River, and the left-hand turn to Auburn leading to Bear Creek.

Depending on where you live in the Pottstown region you may want to drive to Bear Creek by way of Rt. 422, to Rt. 222 to Rt.183, following Rt. 183, across I-78 and over Blue Mountain, then right at Summit Station onto Rt. 895. This way Bear Creek will be on your right as you drive towards Aucheys and eventually Auburn.

About the Author

Vic Attardo has been writing about the outdoors since age 6 when he caught his first magnetic fish in a bath tub and captured the tale with crayon.
Since then he has published literally hundreds of outdoors stories in national and state magazines.
He is currently a contributing editor to the Pennsylvania Angler and Boater, the official Pa. Fish and Boat Commission magazine; fish and tackle editor for Fur-Fish-Game and his work appears in every issue of the Pennsylvania Outdoor News. He is also featured in the Cabela's Outdoor Journal, the F&W Ice Annual, New York Outdoor News and many others. Reach the author at vicattardo@gmail.com
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